Kumudara Hotel

A desert setting

What we say:

Situated in the northeast corner of New Bagan, a solid 10-minute walk from, well, just about anywhere, the Kumudara is a bit of an anomaly. While we've never been to Palm Springs, upon arrival it made us immediately kind of think of there. The hotel overlooks a lawn with horizon pool and then onwards to the ruins -- you can see a number of sites from the grounds, and for some reason it really felt like we were staying on the edge of the desert. Rooms come in a variety of flavours, with bungalow-style rooms the older offering and new semi-fancy rooms in a series of blocks the more upmarket option. The hotel is apparently popular with groups and we can see why, but the rooms, especially the bungalows, with their broken deckchairs and whatnot felt pretty tired and in need of a refurb -- having a showerhead fly off and hit us in the face wasn't a highlight of our time in Bagan, though at least the staff fixed it quickly. The swimming pool is moderately sized and when the hotel is full it would be a bit of a bunfight, but otherwise by New Bagan standards, this is a reasonable deal.

What we were quoted

Last reviewed by: Stuart McDonald
Stuart McDonald co-founded Travelfish.org with Samantha Brown in 2004. He has lived in Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia, where he worked as an under-paid, under-skilled language teacher, an embassy staffer, a newspaper web-site developer, freelancing and various other stuff. His favourite read is The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton.